Monster Dog | Charlie Bravo, Emilio Linder

Monster Dog | Charlie Bravo, Emilio Linder | It's a dog, all right

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Monster Dog

	Monster Dog Charlie Bravo, Emilio Linder Jef Films, 2005 average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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Alice Cooper stars as Lou, the rock star who unwittingly leads his band into a weekend of terror they will never forget. A classic werewolf adventure with a unique twist, Monster Dog will hold you in the grip of fear as it unleashes new dimensions in ter

I love this movie!

It doesn't get much better than this. Alice Cooper plays international music superstar Vincent Raven, the "biggest rockstar in the world." by his girlfriend's estimate. This film has some of the cheesiest, most ridiculously dumb dialogue you could ever hear and it makes me wonder about Italian horror movies. Why are they so bad? So bad they're good, that is.
The film begins and ends with a music video by alice cooper that is the silliest thing you will ever see. He is dressed up in various costumes such as Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper, Billy the Kid, James Bond, etc. It's great. In between we have a hilarious werewolf movie schlock fest that serves up lots of blood and gore, as any good italian horror film should.
The film was made by Claudio Fragasso under his pseudonym Clyde Anderson. To describe ol' Claudio's style two words come to mind: FOG MACHINE. His films have so much mist floating around in the frames, it's cool looking and all, but does anywhere on the planet have that much fog and mist floating around constantly? Anyway, Fragasso has written, directed, and/or co-directed some of Italy's BEST BAD MOVIES! Hell of the Living Dead (aka Night of the Zombies, aka Virus), the infamous Troll 2, Rats: Night of Terror, Zombie 3, and my personal favorite, Zombie 4: After Death (aka Oltre la morte) are the highlights of his resume of Italian horror exploitation films. He worked on many of them with Bruno Mattei, sometimes without being credited.
So if you enjoy the italian exploitation genre or if you like the 80s heavy metal horror stuff I must urge you to check out this film.
The only bad thing is that the DVD picture and sound quality are not much better than a VHS copy, and there are few extras to speak of. I would love to see this film come out in a restored special edition, hopefully someone like Blue Underground, Shriek Show, or Synapse will pick it up eventually.

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It's a dog, all right

It takes 3 movies to form a subgenre. "Monster Dog" rounds out the subgenre of "rock band goes to an isolated location in the woods and encounters supernatural beings who kill most of them." Admittedly, this is a very specialized subgenre. The other members are Juan Piquer Simon's classic "Pod People" and Jon-Mikl Thor's "Rock and Roll Nightmare," both of which are much more over the top and entertaining than "Monster Dog." Having said that, "Monster Dog" is well worth adding to your bad movie collection.

Right after the reddest credits in the world, the movie begins with the cheesiest, and funniest, Alice Cooper song and video that you will ever see. I will sometimes pop in this disc and just watch the video when I'm feeling down. It'll perk you right up! Alice disagrees, though; when the movie cuts away from the video to a customized van in which Alice and his bad are being driven by their manager, he tells her that "it stinks!" This is a direct homage to the previous year's "Pod People," where Ian Sera's "it stinks!" after his recording session is perhaps the greatest moment of that film.

The band is in the van en route to Alice Cooper's childhood home, where he hasn't been for years. On the way, they pass through several police roadblocks. The cops are out there because wild dogs have killed several people, and as you know roadblocks are the most effective method of controlling dogs. After they arrive at the Cooper home, they find the caretaker dead (but only after they find the delicious sandwiches that kindly old man had made for them). Of course, they find the dead caretaker in the middle of shooting another video, one with a song that is actually pretty good.

Then the band is menaced by bikers who think that Cooper is behind the dog killings. You see, Cooper's dad was a werewolf, or had some kind of werewolf like disease, or something. The rockers dispatch the evil bikers, but then most fall prey to the evil dogs. I won't spoil the ending for you, but if you think you know who the titular monster dog is, you're right. Strangely, for all the stuff that happens, this is a movie that has a number of tedious and slow parts. It feels much longer than its 75 minutes.

"Monster Dog" gets 4 stars as a bad movie. If you own no other movies of this subgenre, I'd get "Pod People" and "Rock and Roll Nightmare" first. But don't neglect this forgotten classic.

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Ruff! Ruff!

The presence of Alice Cooper is probably the only reason someone might be interested at all in Monster Dog. While viewing it you soon realize the joke's been on you. I've certainly seen worse films than Monster Dog, but this movie could have been alot more fun than it actually is. Director Claudio Fragrasso certainly didn't dazzle most of us with Zombie 4 or his script for Zombie 3, and Monster Dog is yet another example of Claudio's shortcomings in the horror genre. Storywise, it's rather simple-Alice and his crew go to his father's mansion to shoot a rock video. Meanwhile, a pack of wild and muderous dogs is roaming the area. Also, Alice's father was lynched years ago for being a suspected werewolf, so naturally Alice's arrival leads the townfolk to feel he's a werewolf also, and is responsible for the wild dogs. Sounds decent enough, but something's really missing. I don't mind the shoestring budget or the bad acting, but something just doesn't work about it. Since the film's not suspenseful or very interesting, more gore could have saved the film I suppose. Cooper can't really carry the weight of the film himself, but that's not his fault as much as it is the script's. Cooper is one of the major reasons to watch the film however coz you keep asking yourself how the hell he got talked into it. Alice was probably in the lowest point in his career at this time(not in terms of his music, which was excellent, but in terms of his popularity in the US), but still very successful abroad, so the guy wasn't strapped for cash in any way. But sometimes celebrities take odd jobs in other countries for fun or an extra bit of money. Alice did tell me(yeah, I met Alice, how do ya like them apples?) that he was assured that this film wouldn't be seen in America, but only in a few small countries. He realizes himself that the film is bad and has a rather humorous attitude about the film. He also did two songs for the film which are actually quite good(probably the best thing about the movie), but never showed up on any album, but rather on his box set. Plus, his voice is dubbed! That's a distraction, but anyone who knows Italian productions knows that this happens quite a bit considering Italians never shot sound while shooting their films. At it's best, Monster Dog has a few chuckles a potentially good plot, and two cool tunes, which is more than you can say about Zombie 4.

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Rare footage of 80's Cooper Videos

If your considering buying this movie it is probably because Alice Cooper is in. The best feature of this movie are the videos of a couple of the songs from his 80-83 years. I haven't seen this in awhile but I believe there were two songs from "Zipper Catches Skin" made into videos for this movie. The movie itself is a low budget South American affair and has been a cause of great embarressment for Alice.

For diehard Cooper fans only

Me and my wife got this because she's the big Alice Cooper fan(atic) and so is her mom. We knew going in that it was going to be a very very bad movie, which helped us enjoy it for what it was... a pretty weak excuse to get Cooper doing some mediocre acting and some decent singing in his only movie. His surrounding cast's performance helps not at all and the monster effects are what is expected of a very low budget 80's horror flick.

Good for a laugh or three, as a collectible for a Cooper collection and (in my case) for falling asleep on the couch. You have been warned!

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